Simon Mainwaring Quotes

In the coming years, if not sooner, social media will become a powerful tool that consumers will aggressively use to influence business attitudes and force companies into greater social responsibility - and, I suggest, move us towards a more sustainable practice of capitalism.

Accept that the moment you buy your latest iPad, iPhone, tablet, app or game it will be promptly followed by a vastly improved and sleeker looking version.

The social business marketplace is effectively forcing brands to engage with consumers on the basis of something that is meaningful to them. More often than not, this takes the form of some core value that finds expression in a non-profit cause.

Like all technology, social media is neutral but is best put to work in the service of building a better world.

If capitalism is to remain a healthy, vibrant economic system, corporations must participate in taking care of the society and the environment in which they live.

Ensure your employees understand what your brand stands for so they can be your first line of word-of-mouth advertising.

The companies that make meaningful contributions while also listening to the voices of others are the ones that will genuinely engage their community, who will then go to work for them.

With the never-ending stream of new social technologies, apps and platforms rolling out every day, its easy to get lost in the minutiae of social media. Yet for there to be effective change, especially within large, top-down, hierarchical institutions, a company must have an over-arching understanding of the new role it has to play.

A social contract is the way out of this dilemma for corporations that want to lead in the 21st century by showing consumers how seriously they take customer loyalty and goodwill.

The false separation between living and giving must end.

Social media companies must combine their mastery of the latest in real-time, location based or augmented reality technologies in the service of clear and consistent storytelling.

Everyone living under the social contract we call democracy has a duty to act responsibly, to obey the laws, and to abandon certain types of self-interested behaviors that conflict with the general good.

Perhaps the most effective way to describe the approach a brand must take is to think of themselves as social cartographers. By that I mean that brands must simultaneously inspire, engage and maintain a series of conversations taking place within certain cultural landscape specific to their business goal.

As we approach each of the great social challenges of our time we must acknowledge that old thinking will not provide the new solutions we need. These solutions will be uncomfortable, hard to sell and risky to execute. But the cost of not doing so is even greater.

If a brand wants to build social communities, capital and influence, it must become the chief celebrant of its community, not its celebrity. This simple shift in approach unlocks enormous transformative potential for brands.

The most potentially transformative impact of social media is its ability to encourage brands to marry profit and purpose. The reason brands participate is that such outreach earns those companies social currency enabling them to start or participate in conversations that connect them to consumers in meaningful ways.

Social media demands a lot of us on top of our already demanding lives. So let's disconnect as we need to and renew our interest and ourselves.

Your computer needn't be the first thing your see in the morning and the last thing you see at night.

The creative destruction that social media is currently unleashing will change more than technology or the leader board of the Fortune 100. It is driving a qualitative shift in the nature of relationships between brands and their customers.

The way customers relate to brands and how profit is generated has changed so dramatically almost every professional is being challenged to reconsider what they do in order to stay relevant.

It is time for corporate America to become 'the third pillar' of social change in our society, complementing the first two pillars of government and philanthropy. We need the entire private sector to begin committing itself not just to making profits, but to fulfilling higher and larger purposes by contributing to building a better world.

There's an adage that is an apt description of the new dynamic at work between brands and consumers connected through social media: People support what they help to build. But now that many brands are launching community-driven cause marketing campaigns, the challenge becomes what to do next?

What today's business reality makes clear is that brands cannot survive in a society that is failing economically, socially, ethically, and morally.

What is sure is that technological change is accelerating in all directions and, like children playing in a fountain, consumers are reveling in the experience.

Make the customer the hero of your brand's story.

Consumers desiring a better world have already achieved some successes in this regard, helping to transform several industries from the ground up.

Define what your brand stands for, its core values and tone of voice, and then communicate consistently in those terms.

The advent of Google+ and the emergence of the personalized web means this is more true than ever. Brands, and their advertising partners, must wake up to this challenge and define themselves with clarity, consistency and authenticity. Otherwise they just might find themselves shouting in a ghost town.

Ultimately, it's possible that social media platforms will be designed as templates that the users themselves customize in terms of the best way to express their community and experience of life, and brands will have to simply follow suit.